I drank in the honesty in his dark eyes like I was a sponge in such desperate need of it that all I could do was soak it up and let it fill all of those dark, unworthy corners of my heart which I’d believed were an unchangeable part of me for so long. I’d never even dared to hope for someone to love me the way he was professing to right now and looking at it in his gaze unlocked something in me which I’d feared I would never come to have.
“There is only him,” I breathed, lingering in that look he was giving me and knowing that I was in trouble with this man. Because he was right. No matter how long I planned on dragging this out and trying to convince myself that we were taking our time and getting to know each other better, I already knew all there was to know of him. Hell, we’d been shacked up together for almost six months and there was never a day where this heat between us had dimmed or my hunger for him had faltered. We were all in. So marriage, kids, all that crazy shit that people did when they knew they’d found the one was on the cards for us if we wanted it. But I was still planning on winning this war first.
Darius broke a smile, tilting his head to the side as he looked me over and slowly removed his hand from my throat, releasing me from the spell of his touch.
“No weddings, got it,” he said, smirking at me with that cocky look in his eyes which I knew meant he thought he’d won a point here, but I wasn’t going to let him leave me on the back foot.
I leaned in close and kissed him again, the demand of our lips and the scratch of his stubble making my skin prickle before I stepped back and offered him a single word.
“Yet.”
I turned on my heel and strode away while the shock settled into his features, and I laughed as he called out after me.
I made the ground shake at his feet as I took off running back towards The Burrows, another laugh tumbling from my lips at the game as he took chase, shooting water after me which splashed against the air shield I threw up at my back.
I made it into the farmhouse, racing through the door past the startled looking guards and swinging around a corner before yanking open the doorway hidden behind the grandfather clock and leaping through it.
I slammed the door behind me and ran a few more steps down the darkened tunnel then skidded to a halt as the sound of his footsteps thundering along behind me made my pulse skip.
I pressed my back to the stone wall, casting a concealment spell around myself and wielding my earth magic so that the rock wall grew around me, shifting to hide me from view a moment before Darius threw the door open.
He took off running down the corridor and I held my breath, working to hide my presence as he drew closer to my hiding place and I stifled a laugh. But just as I thought I’d gotten away with the game, he jerked to a halt, his arm flying out and hooking me around the waist as he yanked me against his chest.
“You can’t hide from me, Roxy,” he growled, kissing me hard before I could reply and pushing me back against the wall.
I moaned into his mouth as he gripped my thighs and lifted me up, crushing me against the stone and kissing me breathless as his hard cock ground against me and let me know exactly what he was thinking of doing instead of getting breakfast.
“You need to work on your concealment spells,” he murmured against my lips.
“No doubt you could do better,” I replied.
“I could conceal us so well that no one would even hear you screaming as you came all over my dick, let alone see you panting for me against this wall,” he said cockily and fuck me, I was tempted to take him up on that offer.
He kissed me again as I locked my ankles behind his back, moaning at the feeling of him grinding against me as his powerful body pinned me to the wall, but before I could get too lost in that idea, a strangled scream and beastly howl echoed through the tunnel and made my heart freeze in my chest.
We broke apart breathlessly, both of us looking down into the darkness of the tunnel where the unearthly howl sounded again.
“That doesn’t sound like a Werewolf,” I said, gripping Darius’s forearms as he continued to hold me against the wall.
“No, it doesn’t,” he replied with a frown.
The scream came again, pleas for help filling the air and making a shiver dart down my spine.
Darius released me in an instant, my feet hitting the floor as a growl spilled from his lips and his eyes shifted into his golden Dragon form, the beast in him rising to the surface of his skin.
“Stay close and stay behind me,” he commanded.
“That’ll be a fuck no, dude,” I replied, shouldering him to one side as I took the lead and started running down the tunnel with him at my back.